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Here’s Everything That Didn’t Happen in Last Year’s State of the Union

An annotated tour of the president’s 2013 remarks reveals the annual addresses are chock-full of proposals that don’t come to pass.

President Obama rests his hand next to a copy of his speech as he delivers his State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress on Feb. 12, 2013 at the Capitol.

National Journal

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Marina Koren

Jan. 27, 2014, 8:56 a.m.

History has shown that State of the Union addresses generally tend to be, more or less, all the same.

So this week, President Obama’s address will echo the remarks delivered by his predecessors. But it will also sound a lot like his own speech from just a year before. Obama didn’t cross off most of the items on his policy wish list in 2013, and Tuesday’s address to Congress may sound like a broken record.

For a look at what did and didn’t happen in 2013, scroll through an annotated version of the president’s 2013 remarks. (Clicking on the highlighted portions of text brings up our comments.)